Category Archives: Paradigm Shift

How PeopleCount works, part 4, Young People

Posted on by
Reply

In part 3, we saw how today, our political opinions don’t matter. With PeopleCount.org, they will matter and people will act more responsibly and become more informed. In this article, we’ll explore how it’ll effect young people.

This article says today’s young people are better informed, but voting less. They have more exposure to political articles and positions on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, but they find it distasteful. And, their opinions don’t make a difference- so why bother?

But imagine a few years from now after PeopleCount.org takes off. Imagine for a minute that high school students vote on issues they care about.

They would develop the expectation that their opinions made a difference, that when they’re 18, they’ll help steer the country.  How different will that be from the way you and I grew up, wedded to cynicism and expecting politics to be messy, slow, and filled with fighting and frustration?

Sure, there’ll be hard questions that many don’t know the answers to. What will they do? Imagine your voice guided government- what would you do?

They’ll ask others on social media. They’ll search the web for answers. They’ll participate on Reddit or ask questions on Quora. And maybe they’ll start by checking “Don’t Know” and see that lots of people are undecided. This could provoke a national effort to come up with better answers and better information. Maybe a new site will spring up where people brainstorm solutions to political problems and people rate them to call attention to the better ones, or an existing site that tries this, like SynAccord or AgreeDis, will get the attention and support it needs to make a difference.

Imagine kids grow up occasionally getting a message that an issue they care about is being taken up by Congress. They’ll read their representative’s report and give them feedback. They’ll use the handy links to see focused articles from their favorite news sources, blogs and commentators, as well as to new sites.  They’ll be able to see which sources people liked, which they thought were fair or presented the issue better, and which had novel perspectives.

PeopleCount.org’s plan is to shift the culture. Currently, we think our opinions don’t make a difference. Not only are we right, but it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that reinforces our powerlessness. With PeopleCount.org, people will be empowered. People will expect they can make a difference. That expectation will add to people’s power. They’ll act like their actions matter. They’ll come up with new ideas and act on them. They’ll create new solutions and make them work.

We’ll wrap it up in part 5.

How PeopleCount Works, part 3, Acting Responsibly

Posted on by
Reply

This article continues from part 2, about how PeopleCount.org will change what’s possible in politics.  Once PeopleCount.org launches, Americans will be participating more because our voices will matter.

Today when a pollster calls, we are surprised and often give throw-away opinions. We have to answer in just a few moments. We can’t read first or have a conversation with a friend. Before the survey, our opinions do not matter. After the survey, once again, our opinions do not matter.

Now imagine those same survey questions on PeopleCount.org. You can talk to friends before you answer. You can click on a link for more information and read about the issue. Knowing your opinions matter, you’ll listen to news differently. At any time, you can return to the issues and change your vote.

With PeopleCount.org, we’ll contemplate more. We’ll learn more. And where surveys are static snapshots usually done once a year, you can update your political profile on PeopleCount at any time. We’ll have a reason to pay attention to issues, to ask questions and become informed. As a country we’ll learn and grow, together.

Americans currently don’t take responsibility for government because we can’t, not because we’re stupid, or lazy, like some pundits say. Apathy is not a trait of Americans, it’s an adaptation to a government that is guided by wealthy special interests, not by what citizens want. With PeopleCount.org, we’ll easily act responsibly to guide government. It’ll become a natural expression of who we are as Americans.

We’ll explore more in the next article.

How PeopleCount Works, part 2

Posted on by
Reply

About 15 months ago, I wrote a short blog entry on How PeopleCount Works. Please read that first. It summarizes what our political system would look like with people using PeopleCount.org.  For this entry, imagine we had that system.

If you vote on PeopleCount.org today, you’ll see you can say whether or not you’d like an approval vote on the candidates, to see who the front-runners are. An “approval vote” is one where you can vote for all the candidates you’d be happy to see win.

But what would an approval vote look like? What could it tell us? On the site, we’ll be able to have such a vote and see. Maybe we’ll find a third-party candidate who’s center-of-the-road, dedicated, free of corporate money and most people like! Where today’s polls only ask which single candidate you’d vote for if the election were tomorrow, we can much more thoroughly explore public opinion on PeopleCount.org.

On PeopleCount.org, we could even run some approval votes in different categories. A candidate weak in one area, such as foreign policy, could focus his message on that, or tell us how he’ll compensate. A candidate known for accomplishments in just a few areas could tell us her less-known experiences.

Seeing what others like and dislike about someone can open our eyes. By seeing each others votes, we’ll be having a kind of national conversation. And we can respond by changing our votes if we like. Or maybe we discover most of us like an independent who has a history of suggesting compromises and promises to represent the people instead of a party.

If this happens, probably the major-party candidates will stop promising to represent a party and promise to represent all of our interests as well!

While PeopleCount.org will focus on issues, it’ll also enable us to learn much more about voting systems, and much more about candidates. PeopleCount.org is about much, much more than “voting on issues.” It’s about the American people being free to communicate constructively, lifting the limits on what’s possible.

Part 3 will show how, with PeopleCount.org, we will naturally act responsibly to guide government.

We Can Create Our Future

Posted on by
Reply

You and I lack the power to change our society. But together with other Americans, We, The People, can.

What’s predictable is that Congress remain in gridlock. What’s predictable is that many of our people think liberals and/or conservatives are wrong, bad or worse. What’s predictable is that the parties obstinately fight each other for power, that Congress continues its dependency on money, its conflicts of interest, and preserves opportunities for legal corruption. What’s predictable is the two parties continue to fight for the steering wheel as the ship of state drifts into stormier seas and deeper debt.

PeopleCount.org offers an alternative future, one in which we communicate constructively about what we want, free Congress from its corruption and make it accountable to us, The People. In this future, we can change the laws we want to change and make the ship of state not just steerable, but nimble and quick.

Join me in creating this future. The path is pretty short, but it will take an act of will. Your will. If a few percent of us create this future, we can change first what all of us predict, and then the future itself.

We’re offering you a future in which our government is of, by, for, and accountable to The People. It’s the same system, but with a new piece that delivers constructive political expression and accountability. It delivers true representative democracy. Together we can make it work.

Will you dare to create this future with us?

Please register on PeopleCount.org and vote on some issues. And at the top of the page, click on How You Can Help, and send us a donation to help us build the system at the core of this future.

A Political Alternative

Posted on by
Reply

In an interview on DemocracyNow, Russel Brand said:

…the apathy doesn’t come from us, the people. The apathy comes from the politicians. They are apathetic to our needs…

Perhaps that’s more of a symptom than a cause. Perhaps most, or even all of our political problems are also symptoms.

In my analysis, we have results exactly consistent with our political system. Our democratic systems were born out of the idea of “representative democracy”, but with typical human shallow thinking, we thought if people voted for representatives, the representatives would know what we want and they’d vote for solutions. While some representatives thought the same and tried to do right by voters, many were corrupt. And as our world became more complex, it became impossible to know what people wanted- we even enshrined this idea in the term “silent majority.”

Later he said:

I look elsewhere for alternatives … alternative political systems …
I’ve not invented it yet

What would a political alternative look like in which government was representative? The usual answer is that representatives would do what we want and be accountable. So what kind of system would produce these?

For government to be representative, the people would need to be representable. We’d have to say what we want in a way that could communicate clearly. An easy way to do this is to enable us to vote on issues.

For government to be accountable, first, our representatives would need a way to account for their actions, to report to us on each issue. If we had a website where we could vote on issues, each issue would havea link to my representative’s report in addition to its questions.

Second, we’d need a way to hold representatives accountable. Today, we understand this to mean a way for challengers to run effective campaigns inexpensively, so they’re not beholden to wealthy interests. But this is easy if we had the website above- we could allow challengers to report to us as well on each issue.

While much more is possible on such a website, just the basic functions above, if done well, would revolutionize both politics and government. Embracing a political alternative need not be violent, nor change the basic ideals of our society- it can merely support them.

Please help guide government- log onto PeopleCount.org today and try out what it’d be like to vote on issues. And then support PeopleCount to help us grow.

Comparing Business and Government

Posted on by
Reply

Four months ago, Thomas Friedman wrote an op-ed in The NY Times: Start-Up America: Our Best Hope. In comparing business and government, he focuses on the dynamism in the world of start-ups versus the stagnation in Washington DC.  And, like most complaints, it doesn’t suggest a real cause, much less a solution.

Note that his article isn’t about Startup America, nor even about companies in general, it’s about start-ups, mainly new, Silicon Valley companies. He neglects to say that as companies get large, they mostly do so by narrowing their focus and by being authoritarian. Growing from nothing, they have the freedom to try new approaches, and form solutions to new problems.  And though the hand-picked examples are exceptions, most fail and many lose huge sums of money due to mistakes, failures to compete or just working on projects that people don’t really want.

Our government, on the other hand, must solve a host of broad problems, and:

  • It can’t fail.
  • We insist it be run by 536 executives (435 in Congress, 100 senators, 1 president)
  • They’re accountable to 486 different boards, different groups of millions of voters each of whom serves on 3 “boards”, one for the district, state and country.
  • There’s no way for board members to communicate with each other, much less meet, so there’s no way to direct the executives.

In business, broad authority for change is given to the CEO who is monitored closely by a board of directors that meets in person four times a year. The accounting department and auditors also report to the board and regulations constrain actions and ensure communication to shareholders. In government, the CEO job is split among the members of Congress, the board (voters) are almost impotent, there’s little accounting or reporting on actual performance, and Congress is largely above regulations.

It’s time to empower the board and build an accountability and communication system for government. If we had this, like in a private firm, Congress could propose changes, the board could give the nod or not, the President could implement the changes, and reports would come back to the board.  It wouldn’t be exactly like a company- the differences are still huge.  But it would give government a lot of the structure that’s currently missing and it would free government to solve more problems instead of fight each other.

It’s time we think outside the box, and consider what’s missing from government- a way for voters to communicate and for executives to be accountable. This is the vision at PeopleCount.org, to build an accountability and communication system for government.

If I won the lottery? I’d create the future.

Posted on by
Reply

A question arose on Facebook:  What would you do if you won the lottery?

My answer: If I won the lottery I’d keep doing what I’m doing, I’d create the future of humanity (except full time.)

What if we could all communicate effectively about what we want for the future of the planet, and work together effectively to build it? What if 99% of the money and energy spent on political fighting could be spent on making food, education, green energy, and good jobs plentiful? And eradicating disease, ignorance, fear and war?

Looking at the past, it looks impossible. But walking forward is always error-prone if you’re looking backward, or even to the side. The rate of change has always surprised most people, yet it’s predictable. If you knew all the incredible stuff that was invented recently and knew what people were working on, no inventions would surprise you. The reason why we’re surprised so often, whether by nano-bots, 3D printing, massive government surveillance or solar roadways is because we feel our problems are real and persistent, and along with them, our identity, our abilities and the world.

With politics, the feelings are usually resignation and frustration. With government, the feeling is usually cynicism, plus fear that the other party will gain power and make things worse.

What we fail to realize is that those are just feelings. What’s possible in the future isn’t limited to what we feel is possible. In realizing this, I realized it’s possible to end hunger, war, poverty, disease, even suffering, if we communicate and work together effectively. And I saw that there’s nothing in the way of us doing these, but there is something missing. So we’re building it.

This is what I”m doing with my life, transforming politics from being expensive battles to being how we constructively, peacefully and inexpensively design our future together. And we’ll transform government from gridlock, boondoggles and low approval ratings to how we work together effectively.

And, though winning the lottery would help, I don’t need to win the lottery to live a life of fulfillment and contribution.  Nor do you all. Spend 15 minutes per week, voting on issues and enrolling with your friends. And you needn’t match my spending. Just donate $20 or send me an email and volunteer a few hours. Do that, and I guarantee I’ll deliver.

Come join me, on PeopleCount.org.

How PeopleCount Works

Posted on by
Reply

A user told me:

The How it Works page was a long block of almost solid text;  It’s doubtful that many people read it.

Making a video (or animation) is on my to-do list.  Care to help?  (Note: It was rewritten in October, 2015)

It’s pretty simple, though, if you look at the real problems in politics:

  • We can’t effectively say what we want, politically, so we’re locked out of politics, frustrated and resigned.
  • We don’t know what we, collectively want, so we don’t know what our officials are accountable for.
  • Our officials don’t know, so they can’t confidently deliver solutions- they hide behind parties, argue philosophy. Stuck in gridlock, they pander to wealthy interests.
  • They can’t report to us, so they can’t BE accountable.
  • We have little choice in elections because they’re so expensive, so few people can run, so we have little choice.  Few choices means we can’t choose someone a bit better, we can’t hold our representatives accountable.

The solution is for us to vote on issues, so we and our officials can know what we want. They’ll even be able to mine the data for great compromises.

They will file simple, issue-targeted reports and summaries. You’ll be able to log into your account and see what new reports have been filed. You can scan them, or drill down.  Or maybe you’ll look for them once a year and just scan the summaries.

And challengers can use the same system to also report to us, both about what they would do, as well as about the incumbent’s performance.  Third parties will even come out with score cards and grades.  Knowing what we want, it’ll be easier to see how good a job our officials are doing.

That’s it, at a high level. Of course there are a LOT more details to cover, but that’s how it’ll work.

When I have conversations with people, most people launch into their own complex analysis of “what the real problems are.”  I’m happy to have those conversations, but they don’t make for a short answer.

Later, I added more about how PeopleCount works in four follow-on articles

Representative Democracy Isn’t

Posted on by
Reply

Representative Democracy isn’t representative.  The Free Dictionary defines the adjective “representative” as, first:  Representing, depicting, or portraying or able to do so.  But the truth is, our representatives don’t represent us, and can’t.  They don’t know what we want.

Candidates say what they stand for.  Some try to speak their values.  Some take stands on issues.  Some promise to support certain solutions.  They’re representing something, but not us.

Some try to say what they think we want.  Some dedicate themselves to some theory of what we should want or what they think is good for us.  Again, they don’t represent us.

Once elected, many try to represent their constituents.  But they can’t because they don’t know what we want.  Not knowing what we want, they’re hesitant to take a position lest it not be popular.  So we often hear them promise virtuous things without any commitment to real action. Instead, they actually represent their parties, to give them a known base of supporters and to ensure they can take advantage of the party’s large marketing budget.

Often, once elected, they support a particular industry or wealthy donor group.  Partly this ensures more advertising dollars for their next campaign, and partly this ensures a lucrative job in industry if they lose.

Most politicians report they entered politics to represent their constituents interests and make a difference.  But the system is set up so representatives can’t represent constituents, and are often rewarded for working against their interests.

Four challenges stand in the way of true representation:
1. Voters and elected officials knowing what the people want
2. Officials being accountable- reporting to the people on their progress
3. Voters hearing reports on officials progress
4. Voters having real choice in elections

In England, some are working to enable voters to impeach Members of Parliament, as if this will make government more representative.  It won’t.  If we meet the above 4 challenges, ability to impeach can improve representation, allowing voters to hold their representatives accountable more often, it doesn’t solve the basic problems.

Unless officials know what we want, they’ll rarely be responsive.  Unless we know what we want, we can’t hold them accountable and others can’t effectively criticize their performance.  Unless they can report on issues to those who care about those issues, there’ll be accountability.  And unless we have real choice in elections, we can’t hold them accountable.

What’s missing in all countries is this citizen-empowerment, citizen-communication and politician accountability system.  Other proposed solutions, like the ability to impeach, or limiting campaign contributions are merely bandages on an inadequate system.

The real solution, and the one PeopleCount.org is creating, is to giving power to The People is making representative democracy truly representative.

 

Actions are Better than Resolutions

Posted on by
Reply

Don Mashak wrote a blog about his political new year’s resolutions. He wants people to participate in politics, attend meetings, advocate on issues, rally others and unite. Isn’t this the same wonderful rhetoric we’ve been hearing all our lives? He doesn’t say HOW to unite…

He says the “major parties have betrayed … used issues .. to divide and conquer .. also distract us their corruption and prevent … uniting”. Don’s succumbed to the classic blame game, treating a party as a beast that betrays, distracts and harms. While many of us feel similarly, we also can see that parties are struggling for power, fighting for what they believe in, working diligently within the system, though at times ruthlessly and testing the limits.

Then he says “the lies … of Obamacare … (and) violations of our privacy by the NSA have created a paradigm shift … distrust of government …” This is not a paradigm shift. Distrust of government has been rampant for decades. This, plus distrust of “the other” party are at the heart of the status quo. Then he launches into some resolutions about overthrowing the party leadership.

Remember Arab Spring? If he can get lots of people to participate with him, it’ll be like that- an uprising, noise, change and in the power vacuum, the old established powers will be there to pick up the pieces and continue the status quo.

He’s right, people need to unite- but that takes communication. It takes the kind of coherent, effective communication on issues that’s only possible in voting. This is why voting is the heart of PeopleCount.org’s solution.

Imagine a world where we vote on issues as a foundation- not on bills to make laws, but on simple issues to guide our representatives. We vote not once a year, but always, in a private account on-line. Our opinions are tallied, and show up in results by district, state and nationally. With this new platform, our opinions count, so we’ll begin to take them seriously and educate ourselves more on the issues.

Once we start knowing what we, collectively, want on an issue, we can explore variations and new ideas. Many will change their votes as they explore and see what others want to do. And we can use the tallies to finally know what our representatives are accountable for. Meanwhile, our representatives can know what we, even the centrists and independents, want and deliver it. Plus they can mine the data for good compromises.

Atop this foundation of voting on issues will be an accountability system, a novel solution to give each of us the reports we want from our representatives as well as giving them rewards and feedback for reporting. It’ll also allow them to lead us as they work with others to put a concrete plan together.

Challengers will also be able to use this platform to communicate with us so political campaigns can be inexpensive. This means elections with real choice rather than our current system which gives incumbents the advantage and keeps out the non-rich.

Currently, with people lacking effective collective communication, parties are essential. Not knowing what we want, we must vote for people with positions, and they must unite to form blocks, the parties. The outcomes we have are a direct result of our system, especially what it lacks- mechanisms for voter communication and political accountability.

If we all vote on positions, representatives can truly represent US, the People, instead of a set of party positions. And with choices in elections, if our current representative doesn’t represent us well, we can easily find people who promise to do better.

Don’s rhetoric is great, but we’ve heard it for decades, and longer. This kind of rhetoric doesn’t give people a concrete way to participate. PeopleCount.org does. In a few minutes a week you’ll be able to express your positions on a new issue and see what’s changed in old issues that you care about. Representatives will have a structure that helps them to be accountable, rewards them for it, and punishes them if they’re not. They’ll become responsive. In turn, we, the people, will notice the difference our participation makes. We’ll step up to the responsibility of self-government. We’ll educate ourselves more on issues and more of will vote in elections.

This is a true paradigm shift, people being empowered to self-govern by guiding their representatives, rather than being disempowered as they are today, resigned, cynical, and often angry.

You’ll know the paradigm has shifted as people stop criticizing government and the parties and focus instead on what we want for our future, concrete paths forward.

Opportunities for actions are better than resolutions. Participate in PeopleCount.org today.